Consultation: Towards a Communication on Forced Displacement and Development

In 2014, the European Commission launched a consultation process to gather input on the issue of 'forced displacement and development' in view of adopting a Communication.

The issue

Forced displacement – when people are forced away from their home, becoming refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) – is not only a humanitarian issue but also a development, economic and political challenge.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has recognised forced displacement as one of the key factors that threaten to reverse much of the development progress made in recent decades. Refugees and IDPs are included in the category of vulnerable people that the Agenda will target. A greater involvement of development stakeholders from the outset of a crisis, and throughout, is also being discussed widely by both humanitarian actors, in the lead-up to the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016, and development actors, with the UN and the World Bank as major advocates.

Consultations

Two expert consultations were held on 21 and 22 January 2016 in Brussels. These consultations allowed for an open and targeted policy dialogue and sharing of experiences between the Commission and a broad set of stakeholders from Member States, academia, civil society, NGOs, private sector and international organisations on the role of development cooperation in addressing forced displacement.

To this end, the Commission prepared a non-paper for expert consultation with key issues and four main groups of discussion questions. The four main discussion areas are (a) durable solutions and inclusion, (b) stronger evidence base, (c) socio-economic approaches and (d) levels of intervention.

Past consultations and activities

The Commission has organised several consultation activities involving a wide range of stakeholders. In April 2014, it presented the Issues Paper "Development, Refugees and IDPs"to the Council and partner organisations. In addition, it has organised interactive consultation events during 2014 and 2015:

Roundtable on Development Solutions to Displacement, in October 2014, in the framework of the project Dialogue on Migration and Asylum in Development (DOMAID), implemented by a consortium including European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Discussion paper;

Expert meetings with Member States and selected host countries and countries of origin in December 2014; and

Peer-to-peer meeting on asylum and international protection with Member States and neighbourhood host countries, in February 2015, in the framework of the project Euromed Migration III, with a dedicated session on 'Viable and feasible long-term solutions for forced displacement'.